New York Sports Club at Princeton Shopping Center closed for good
The New York Sports Club at the Princeton Shopping Center has been closed permanently. It is unclear whether another fitness company has bought the location from the parent company that owns the New York Sports Club brand.
On Friday, workers removed fitness and office equipment from the gym that has been at the shopping center for more than two decades.
All calls to the Princeton location are being forwarded to the New York Sports Club in East Brunswick. An employee there confirmed that the Princeton location had been closed. The East Brunswick location is the only location that is currently open in New Jersey, employees said. The Marlboro, New Jersey location was sold to Crunch Fitness and will reopen under the Crunch Fitness name. Planet Princeton has reached out to Town Sports International and, Edens, the owner of the Princeton Shopping Center, to see if another fitness center is slated for the space. We will update this story when more information becomes available.
The closure comes the same week parent company Town Sports International announced that it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. In an announcement about the bankruptcy filing, the company said it would continue to operate its sports clubs. But it appears that as part of the restructuring, the company has shut down underperforming locations and sold some others. Town Sports International owns New York Sports Clubs, Boston Sports Clubs, Philadelphia Sports Clubs, Washington Sports Clubs, Lucille Roberts, Total Woman, and Around the Clock Fitness brands.
Town Sports, one of the largest owners and operators of fitness clubs in the Northeast, was hit with a class-action lawsuit earlier this year for continuing to charge monthly membership fees after gyms were forced to close due to COVID-19 in March. Members at some locations were still being charged a monthly fee to suspend their accounts or a cancellation fee. The New York Sports Club reached an agreement with the attorney general of New York in April to freeze memberships and reimburse members for fees charged while the gyms were closed. In September, the New York Attorney General’s office received a new wave of complaints from members who reported that their accounts had been unfrozen and automatically charged on Sept. 1 when some of the franchise’s locations reopened in New York City.
Krystal Knapp is the founding editor of Planet Princeton. Follow her on Twitter @krystalknapp. She can be reached via email at editor AT planetprinceton.com. Send all letters to the editor and press releases to that email address.
Our feckless government leaders kill another business and increase the unemployed. “But if our actions save one life, it will all be worth it……….” per our dictator governor.
Saving “one life” is an interesting standard for two reasons that I can see; first it’s more an expression of values than a specific number, and second we can’t identify and quantify all the consequences that follow from loss of livelihoods (perhaps including, indirectly, loss of life). But if it’s possible to do so, shouldn’t the prevention of loss of life due to a pandemic be a fundamental purpose of our government? If so, then how should this purpose be balanced with other fundamental purposes of government? I favor sufficient government action to crush the virus, to replace income, and to protect those who are most vulnerable. I wouldn’t consider that dictatorship.
This was a horribly run business. Dirty. Constantly broken equipment. Unfriendly staff. Unsafe (I had my locker broken into twice). No accountability. It’s about time this place went away.
Good point Greg. We should all support lowering the speed limit on roads to 5 mph. We can save 35,000 lives each year.
i think I understand your point, but not the sarcasm. Do you think there are any valid public health responses to the pandemic?
A human life span is about 1,000 months (generally a bit less, but the math is easier). Our shutdown diminishes people’s enjoyment of life, professional accomplishment, and many other things, maybe the overall factor is 50%. While that is highly individual and subjective, the factor seems to be in that neighborhood. Six months, 0.6% x 50% is 0.3%. 0.3% of everyone’s lives. 0.3% of 350 million (population of US) is 1.05 million lifetimes expended on the (now partial) shutdown.
1.05 million lifetimes expended on the shutdown.
That is not counting the financial hardship, physical degradation, other medical conditions exacerbated. It’s just the time of people’s lives down the drain. It is terrifyingly harsh on youth … and you can see that in the quiet noncompliance by so many teens and twenty-somethings … youth cannot be postponed.
The proposed measurement here is not scientific. It is an approximation. It is a suggestion of how the shutdown purpose could be balanced against everything else. If it is even in the ballpark, the shutdown has been a monumental disaster.
Crushing the virus is not a thing. The virus is now endemic. It will be with us until the end of time, like every other virus of this general nature. After the virus passes through a population, it will become relatively inconsequential — maybe it already has in New Jersey. It will probably always be an occasional killer even with a vaccine.
Good argument, LS. Although I don’t think it’s possible to reasonably approximate the loss and damage associated with the pandemic, you show how extensive and awful those effects are. I shouldn’t have used the phrase’ crush the virus’ because it’s unclear. I didn’t mean that the virus can be eradicated — it can’t. I’m only advocating public health policies that will (and already would have, if implemented) reduce Infections and deaths without causing more misery — for example, high-quality masks for all, sufficient contact tracing, sufficient PPE and medications for health care providers, and consistent, truthful messaging.